North Carolina A&T State University

All students are required to take 32 credit hours of general studies courses.

All students are introduced to educational foundation courses and begin the field experience component of the degree program.  

Students take 31 credit hours in their content area and continue with their field experience components of the program.

Students begin their yearlong clinical student teaching experience and licensure review. During the first semester of their senior year, students begin their initial clinical experience and licensure preparation review. During the second semester of their senior year, students complete their advanced clinical practice experiences.

Our undergraduate teacher education candidates learn and implement high-leverage practices throughout their education courses and clinical experiences to improve their content knowledge and pedagogical skills, and to enhance their cultural competency. Undergraduate candidates also participate in an immersion model with a partner school where they are coached by mentor teachers. Within the immersion component of this model, undergraduate teacher candidates are provided with a robust and sequentially aligned clinical field experience.

At N.C. A&T College of Education, we believe, support, and are committed to fairness, support, and opportunity for everyone. We assist undergraduate candidates with deepening their content knowledge and enhancing their pedagogy. We use a practice base model to help our candidates create fair learning experiences for students from different backgrounds and income levels. Our candidates are also engaged in curriculum and professional development grounded in inquiry-based learning and culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy.

A central component of the PBTE Professional Development Model is the integration of mentoring and coaching during the candidate’s program matriculation. During this time, we provide opportunities for them to develop, practice and demonstrate competencies, including content and pedagogical knowledge and skills that promote learning for all students, through robust and sequentially aligned clinical field experiences. These experiences include clinical coaching, modeling, and reflecting that progresses through the cycle of inquiry. We also provide authentic and engaging learning opportunities for the candidates. Our mentoring and coaching components include creating professional development seminars relating to professional disposition, content knowledge, K-12 curricula and cultural competency sustainability.

We believe that the establishment of mutually beneficial partnerships with our K-12 partners is critically important to meet program goals. N.C. A&T's partnership with the districts focuses on early field experiences and clinical practices. We systematically measure the fidelity of program integration and implementation and assess whether key program features correlate to desired outcomes. This is done by analyzing state data, assessing feedback surveys, gathering data from focus groups and evaluating program efficacy based on teacher candidate performance data. We use this data to inform instruction and program improvement.